Can law enforcement agencies and AIDS organizations work together?
Some real achievements have been made when law enforcement authorities and people who use drugs have found a common cause working together to deal with the harms associated with injecting drug use. That’s one of the things that we need to focus on: the ways in which positive policing can support AIDS response. What will UNAIDS highlight at the Commission on Narcotic Drugs? At the Commission on Narcotic Drugs UNAIDS wants to draw attention to the scale of the problem. There is virtually no country in the world where there aren’t at least some people who inject drugs. Recent estimates, constructed under the auspices of the reference group to the United Nations system on injecting drug use, show around 16 million drug users across the world, an estimated 3 million are living with HIV. That’s quite a considerable part of the global HIV epidemic. In fact 30% of the global HIV epidemic outside sub-Saharan Africa is among injecting drug users. “Many IDUs are excluded from HIV treatment progra
